Like the battle of Waterloo, the battle for Scotland was a damn close-run thing. The effects of Thursday’s no vote are enormous – though not as massive as the consequences of a yes would have been.
The vote against independence means, above all, that the 307-year Union survives. It therefore means that the UK remains a G7 economic power and a member of the UN security council. It means Scotland will get more devolution. It means David Cameron will not be forced out. It means any Ed Miliband-led government elected next May has the chance to serve a full term, not find itself without a majority in 2016, when the Scots would have left. It means the pollsters got it right, Madrid will sleep a little more easily, and it means the banks will open on Friday morning as usual.
But the battlefield is still full of resonant lessons. The win, though close, was decisive. It looks like a 54%-46% or thereabouts. That’s not as good as it looked like being a couple of months ago. But it’s a lot more decisive than the recent polls had hinted. Second, it was women who saved the union. In the polls, men were decisively in favour of yes. The yes campaign was in some sense a guy thing. Men wanted to make a break with the Scotland they inhabit. Women didn’t. Third, this was to a significant degree a class vote too. Richer Scotland stuck with the union — so no did very well in a lot of traditonal SNP areas. Poorer Scotland, Labour Scotland, slipped towards yes, handing Glasgow, Dundee and North Lanarkshire to the independence camp. Gordon Brown stopped the slippage from becoming a rout, perhaps, but the questions for Labour — and for left politics more broadly — are profound.
For Scots, the no vote means relief for some, despair for others, both on the grand scale. For those who dreamed that a yes vote would take Scots on a journey to a land of milk, oil and honey, the mood this morning will be grim. Something that thousands of Scots wanted to be wonderful or merely just to witness has disappeared. The anticlimax will be cruel and crushing. For others, the majority, there will be thankfulness above all but uneasiness too. Thursday’s vote exposed a Scotland divided down the middle and against itself. Healing that hurt will not be easy or quick. It’s time to put away all flags.
The immediate political question now suddenly moves to London. Gordon Brown promised last week that work will start on Friday on drawing up the terms of a new devolution settlement. That may be a promise too far after the red-eyed adrenalin-pumping exhaustion of the past few days. But the deal needs to be on the table by the end of next month. It will not be easy to reconcile all the interests – Scots, English, Welsh, Northern Irish and local. But it is an epochal opportunity. The plan, like the banks, is too big to fail.
Alex Salmond and the SNP are not going anywhere. They will still govern Scotland until 2016. There will be speculation about Salmond’s position, and the SNP will need to decide whether to run in 2016 on a second referendum pledge. More immediately, the SNP will have to decide whether to go all-out win to more Westminster seats in the 2015 general election, in order to hold the next government’s feet to the fire over the promised devo-max settlement. Independence campaigners will feel gutted this morning. But they came within a whisker of ending the United Kingdom on Thursday. One day, perhaps soon, they will surely be back.
(Artículo de Martin Kettle, publicado en "The Guardian" el 19 de septiembre de 2014)
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¿Cuándo coge vacaciones la asociación?
LO DICE EL PERIODICO DE ARAGON:
Sin duda la aprobación de la ley de Servicios Sociales, que el pasado viernes se publicó ya en el Boletín Oficial de Aragón (BOA), y la puesta en marcha del sistema de atención a la dependencia han sido los dos hitos más importantes de la Consejería de Servicios Sociales en esta media legislatura, que ha avanzado en el desarrollo normativo de los asuntos pendientes, aunque muchos de ellos no se han ejecutado de forma práctica.
El Periódico de Aragón de hoy comenta el caso, aunque no se cita a la asociación, gracias a dios.
Hay que evitar en lo posible la notoriedad.
PUBLICADO EN EL PERIODICO DE ARAGON:
El Justicia de Aragón, Fernando García Vicente, ha admitido a trámite una queja relacionada con el método para designar a los tribunales de las oposiciones de maestros, que se están celebrando entre los meses de junio y julio. De esta forma, el Justicia solicitará al Departamento de Educación, a quien corresponde la composición de estos tribunales, un informe sobre esta cuestión.
Hasta este momento, la configuración de los tribunales se realizaba a través de un sorteo en el que optaban como candidatos todos los funcionarios docentes que cumpliesen con unos requisitos mínimos de antigüedad en la profesión. Sin embargo, el Departamento de Educación modificó este año los criterios que habían regido hasta esta oposición, de forma que fuesen los directores provinciales de la consejería quienes eligiesen a los candidatos que previamente se hubiesen presentado como voluntarios para participar en el proceso.
De esta forma, y según las bases publicadas en el BOA el pasado 13 de abril, los vocales de los tribunales serían designados por sorteo, mientras que, por el contrario, los miembros serían aquellos funcionarios que sí hubiesen solicitado su participación voluntaria.
¿Y la autoría?
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